


Softly, My Love, But Not So Soft

by Emotionally Compromised Robots (CDRomelle)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Miscommunication, Oral Sex, Sparring, Wrestling, mention of drowning, some blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:00:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27864986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CDRomelle/pseuds/Emotionally%20Compromised%20Robots
Summary: It takes a long time to rebuild a language that has been lost for 500 years.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 14
Kudos: 40





	Softly, My Love, But Not So Soft

**Author's Note:**

> This is set at some point after 2 Old 2 Guard, when Quynh and Andromache have started the reconciliation process but not finished it.
> 
> Possible TW that I'm mentioning here to err on the side of safety: Quynh and Andromache have a physical altercation that I would categorize as "sparring" or "wrestling" but which might be potentially triggering because of its resemblance to domestic violence. Please take that into account in your decision to proceed with this fic.

Andromache wakes tangled in long black hair. 

_What century is it?_ she thinks. She's not usually this disoriented; that had worn off after the first millennium. But it can't be the century she thinks it is, because she hasn't woken tangled in long black hair since—

Oh. 

_Oh_.

She doesn't need to turn her head to know whose warmth it is she feels at her back. But she does anyway, just to see—just to remind herself—

Quynh is the pale shell of an ear resting atop a lump of starch-white blankets and loose black hair. The two of them had fallen asleep facing each other, but some time in the night they had arranged themselves back pressed against back, touching from shoulder to butt. It had been their habit for over a thousand years. 

Beneath the blanket, Quynh's shoulder rises and falls with her breath. She's a light sleeper—or she was, Andromache reminds herself; the cup of her memory already overflows with all the ways, large and small, that the other half of her soul has changed over five hundred years—Quynh _might_ be a light sleeper, so Andromache is slow and careful and deliberate as she rolls over to press her chest against Quynh's back. 

She doesn't put her arms around Quynh. Just buries her nose in her hair. It's silky in the plastic way of modern conditioners, and the chamomile scent is intermingled with the slightly acrid smell of non-organic soap. They're in a hotel suite in Paris, and for once it's not for a job. Andromache had wanted Quynh to feel the best of the twenty-first century's comforts, and none of their safehouses fit that bill. Hence, this cloudlike room, with its soft edges and blurry lights and clean, hazy smells. 

The rhythm of Quynh's breath never falters. Andromache closes her eyes and fills her ears with the sound.

She drifts, her thoughts skimming the silky dark surface of her mind. Inevitably they drift lower, underneath, and she has to shake herself back awake and away, to ground herself in these blankets and pillows and hair and body heat to keep her thoughts from sinking into those too-familiar depths. 

A long, long time ago, after Lykon's death proved their inevitable mortality, she and Quynh had lain by a guttering fire under an open sky, her head in Quynh's lap. Andromache had wanted to get up and run through the cool night air, to run until it all came out with her sweat, and whatever was left burned away in the ache of her muscles. 

"You need to prepare yourself," she said to Quynh, her voice strange in a silence filled only by the crackling fire and rustling grass. 

"For what?" said Quynh, not really listening. 

"I'm older than you," said Andromache.

Quynh didn't respond. 

"I'll be the next one to go," Andromache said. "You need to prepare yourself to be alone." 

The hand had stilled in Andromache's hair. Then Quynh shuffled her body until she was curled around Andromache's back, her arms and legs encircling her. 

"How about this instead," she said. "We make a promise." 

"Quynh," said Andromache. 

"You and me," said Quynh. "Until the end." 

When Andromache didn't respond, Quynh cupped her cheek and forced her to meet her gaze.

"You and me," she said again. "Until the end. Say it or I'll kill you." 

Andromache smiled. It was a feeble, pathetic little thing, but it was her first since Lykon's passing. "You and me." 

"Until the end."

"Until the end."

The bed jostling snaps her into full wakefulness, pulse suddenly pounding in her ears. The kick of adrenaline is familiar, the sizzle beneath it less so. _Something to lose,_ says the prickle on her skin. _Something to lose._

Quynh had rolled over in bed. Her eyes are open, tracing the flare of Andromache's nostrils, the tick of pulse in her neck before cutting to her eyes. They used to have whole conversations like this, debates and speeches and great protestations with just their eyes and the quirk of their lips. 

Not for a long time has Andromache looked at a language and thought, _I can't read this._

She cups Quynh's cheek, because if Andromache can't read her anymore at least she can touch her, can console herself with softness and heat. 

But now Quynh's lips curve downward in an unmistakable frown. 

"What?" says Andromache in a half-remembered language, and speaking out loud feels like a concession, a confession of guilt. 

Quynh turns to burrow her head in the pillow. She says something, but it comes out faint and muffled. 

Andromache runs a hand down Quynh's arm, an attempt at consolation that feels inadequate even to her. Their old old language is rusty in her head, so she says in English, the last language they spoke together, "Please tell me." 

Quynh peeks out of the pillow's softness. "You were having a nightmare." She says it in the language that is uniquely theirs, and Andromache might not be able to speak it again yet, but she will never not understand it. "You were having a nightmare," she says again, and now Andromache can hear beyond the unfamiliar shape of the words to the tone beneath: stiff, uncomfortable, maybe even annoyed. "Weren't you." 

"No," says Andromache. She smiles placatingly. "I don't think I was sleeping deep enough to dream." 

That only makes Quynh look unhappy, but she doesn't move, neither to nestle into Andromache's side nor to pull away. They're back to staring, back to perusing each other's faces. _I'm sorry_ , is what Andromache wants to say, but Quynh bristles like an angry cat when she hears it. So instead she says, "I love you." 

And Quynh still doesn't look happy to hear that, but she doesn't bristle either, so Andromache puts an arm around her and gathers her into her chest. Quynh's nose finds its old home in the divot of Andromache's collar bone, her toes pressed flat against Andromache's shins, wiggling against the soft hairs there. 

"Do you always sleep in fine beds these days?" says Quynh, her voice muffled.

Andromache raises her eyebrows at the change of subject, but doesn't fight it. "Not always. But a lot more than we used to."

"The future is…. soft." Quynh wrinkles her nose as she says it; Andromache can feel the motion of it against her neck.

"Do you like it?" Andromache says. 

A huff of breath. "I like it," says Quynh. "But I think I also hate it." 

Something cracks open inside Andromache, like half of an epiphany, but it snaps closed again as soon as she tries to examine it. The ocean is still in the room with them, she thinks. It fills her with a kind of wild, quiet despair. She holds Quynh tighter. 

After a moment, Quynh wiggles free. She sits up and without a word heads into the bathroom. In another moment Andromache can hear the sound of Quynh brushing her teeth. 

The giggle in her throat takes her by surprise, a sharp stab of warmth in the chill Quynh left behind. Quynh does love to brush her teeth.

It was one of the first new things Andromache had learned about her, after the crack and tang and burn of their reunion had settled into this unfamiliar familiarity. Quynh brushes several times a day, and afterwards runs her tongue over her smooth teeth and grins to herself. Andromache had bought her five different kinds of toothpaste, all different flavors, but Quynh seemed uninterested in them. She just wanted to lick her own teeth. 

Another thing Andromache had gotten wrong. 

With a soft sigh at the creak in her joints, Andromache gets up too. She follows Quynh into the bathroom but heads to the toilet, drops her pants and underwear, and sits down. 

Quynh simply finishes brushing. When she's done, she learns over Andromache and exhales over her face, a deep _haaa_ of hot breath, tongue out and everything. 

Andromache sniffs the air. "Better than any perfume."

Quynh smiles, pleased. They're small, these days, her smiles, but they're there. The perfect size to slip in a pocket, to hold close like a private joke. Just the hint of a dimple, like a divot in stone. 

Suddenly, there are tits in Andy's face. 

Quynh straddles Andy's lap and sits down, right there in the bathroom, with Andy still peeing into the toilet. Without thinking, Andromache wraps her arms around Quynh to hold her steady, and continues to pee. 

Once in the fifth century Quynh had upended a chamberpot on Andromache's head. She thinks they might have been arguing about something, but all she remembers is that afterward they had yelled their laughter as they wrestled on the floor until both their hair was matted with shit and then finally called a truce to bathe in the ocean. 

For a moment the only sound is the soft tinkle of Andy's pee against the bowl. Quynh puts her head on Andy's shoulder.

Andromache finishes, and Quynh makes no move to get up. So they sit there in silence, Andromache watching Quynh's hair ruffle with her own exhales, until her legs start to go numb. 

"Quynh," she says. 

"What."

"I need to get up."

"So get up."

Andy sighs without heat. She gets her feet underneath her knees and stands up, with Quynh still clinging to her, arms around her shoulders and legs around her hips. 

Andy stands there. 

"I need to wipe."

Quynh snorts. 

"I want to wipe," Andromache amends. "It's nice. Very convenient."

"So wipe," says Quynh. 

Andromache sighs again, but she's grinning. With one hand under Quynh's butt to support her, she reaches around with her other arm for the toilet paper. Picking it up is easier than actually using it, but she manages. Then she shuffles forward so she's away from the toilet, releases Quynh's butt so Quynh is supporting her own weight, and crouches down to retrieve her pajama pants. 

She groans as she pushes out of the squat. She'd only managed to get her pants up to around her upper thighs. Good enough. Andromache shuffles to the sink and washes her hands, then dries them on Quynh's back. Quynh bites her shoulder in retaliation as she shuffles back out of the bathroom. 

Quynh is still clinging to her like a baby koala, except she's not much shorter than Andromache so when Andromache hoists them both onto the bed they go down in a pile of awkward limbs. 

"This bed is absurd," Quynh giggles. "It's like a cloud." 

"Better than a horsehair blanket?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself." 

Andromache snorts her laughter. Quynh bobs her head to kiss her nose, then bite it, then close her whole mouth over Andromache's nose and nibble it with her molars. Andromache grabs fistfuls of Quynh's hair and pulls her closer with an exaggerated moan. "Yes, fuck yes…" 

Quynh rolls off her, further onto the bed, her smirk daring Andromache to follow, so Andromache chases her lips for a kiss, open-mouthed and soft until Quynh bites at her lip. Andromache bites back, softer at first, then goaded by Quynh's teeth into harder and harder bites, until she has her full weight against Quynh and they're twisting against each other, biting tongues and lips and chins. 

Then Andromache tastes blood. 

She jerks her head back, separating them. Quynh is flushed and breathing hard, her lips pink and wet. Andromache runs a finger over them, checking for a cut. _I'm sorry_ is a slinking beast trapped behind her teeth. Before she can decide whether to let it out, Quynh shakes her head, her brows coming together, and taps Andromache's lip. Andromache licks—and sure enough the blood was coming from her own mouth. 

The sinking feeling in Andromache's stomach fades away. She smiles, fumbling for lightheartedness. 

"Are you trying to eat me?"

For a moment, a mournful look passes over Quynh's face. Then she bares her teeth. 

And suddenly Andromache is three thousand years in the past. The air has the quick slap of early spring and the sky is gray and endless, only the suggestion of mountains on the far horizon. A thick, wiry rug flattens a patch of tall yellow grass and Quynh is lying on top of it, her braided hair flaring out around her head and her sharp teeth bared. 

They had been wrestling, and Andromache had pinned her. "Again," Quynh had said. 

But when Andromache moved to get off her, Quynh grabbed her by the base of her skull and pressed their mouths together. Andromache had tasted iron and salt. It didn't scare her, not then; it made her laugh. She bit Quynh's already-healed split lip, and Quynh ducked her head to bite Andromache's ear. They rolled around on the ground together, grappling and biting, not trying to draw blood per se but not minding when it happened. 

It had ended with Quynh's mouth between Andromache's legs, and she had shouted her pleasure into the sky, until she imagined the thunder hundreds of miles away would reverberate with the sound of her voice. 

The hotel bed is bigger than their old rug, and softer. So much softer that it seems strange the two things could both share the name of "blanket." Andromache drops her head down on Quynh's chest with a huff. 

Quynh threads her fingers through Andromache's hair, pets once, twice, then gets a grip and tugs. Andromache only nestles deeper into Quynh's neck. With a deep breath, just short of a sigh, Quynh opens her hands and returns to petting Andromache's hair. 

Into the silence comes a quick gurgle. Quynh's stomach. They both laugh, and it's somehow like a release of tension. Andromache sits up. "What do you want to eat?" 

"Mangoes from Hoa Chau, noodles from Yunnan, dumplings from Xiongnu, wine from Palestine," Quynh says, sing-song.

When Andromache doesn't laugh, Quynh frowns. "I… can have all those things, can't I?"

Andromache nods. "It might take a few hours, but… yeah." 

"A few hours," Quynh repeats. She pushes Andromache off her so she can sit up, shaking her head. "And do they taste as good, when they are brought to you?"

"I don't know," says Andromache. "I don't usually… indulge in things like this." 

Quynh chews her lower lip. "Well then. What do you want?"

"Nuh-uh," Andromache says. "This is about you." 

Quynh scoffs. They lock eyes, and once again Andromache has the sense of reading a language she doesn't understand. 

"You don't like it here," she says. 

Quynh shrugs. 

"Do you want to go somewhere else?" Andromache asks. 

Quynh looks away. Punches the downy bedcovers. Looks up. With an air of utter misery she says, "What do you want?"

That little epiphany box cracks open again. No matter what, Andromache must not let it close again. 

She pushes a smile onto her face, something familiar and teasing. Keep her comfortable, keep her talking. "So accommodating." 

Quynh smiles back, bright and winning. "It's because of all the drowning." 

Andromache's grin dissolves. She opens her mouth. Closes it again. They've talked about it, fought about it, literally come to blows about it. The path that led them to this soft-edged hotel suite is littered with apologies. What more is that to say? What more can she say, when the word still punches the air from her lungs? 

Quyhn finds something to say. "I don't like that you don't like that," she says. 

Andromache sits up now too. "What does that mean?"

"You hate when I talk about it." 

"I…Sure. Yes. Yes! Of course I do." 

Quynh gets up off the bed, paces across the room. "You have to let me talk about it." 

Andromache feels like she missed a step. "I can't stop you." 

"No, you'll just give me that look." 

"What look?"

"That one. That sad, pitiable look." Quynh points at Andromache's face. "And—" she drops her hand and bites her lip. "I don't pity you. I don't pity you. I want to want to—but I don't want to—I won't. I'm the one who should… I was the one in the box."

"Oh, Quynh," Andromache says. She steps forward to embrace her but Quynh shakes her off with a disdainful shake of her head. 

"No. No! I was the one in the box, and I don't want your pity. So stop treating me like _I'm_ the one about to fall apart." 

"Quynh," she says. This little box is open but any wrong word and it will snap closed again, maybe forever. "You're not about to fall apart."

Quynh just looks at her. Her lower lip is trembling. 

"And…" says Andromache, "and neither am I." 

Quynh scoffs, turns away. For a moment she just stands, back to Andromache. When she turns her eyes are full of tears, her face contorted with rage. "How dare you," she says. "How dare you become mortal before I get back." 

She takes a running leap and tackles Andromache on the bed, her hands fisted in Andromache's shoulders and her forehead pressed against Andromache's forehead. "How dare you. How fucking dare you." Andromache doesn't fight back, just lies there and lets Quynh manhandle her, which makes Quynh's eyes blaze. With a snarl, she grabs Andromache's throat and squeezes.

Andromache levers her arm between Quynh's and breaks her grip. Quynh rears back for a punch. Hesitates. And Andromache gets her feet beneath her hips and thrusts upward with her whole body, forceful enough to send Quynh tumbling over her head and off the bed's other edge. 

She springs to her feet, Quynh still out of view on the other side of the bed. She raises her fists in a defensive stance. Lowers them. 

Quynh pops up and Andromache instinctively raises her fists again. Quynh is grinning. 

Andromache sets her face. "You hesitated." 

"It won't happen again," says Quynh, with utter seriousness. 

A beat. "Good," says Andromache. 

When she lunges for Quynh this time, Quynh is ready. 

An hour later, the hotel room mirror is cracked, there's a fist-sized hole in the drywall and a lamp has shattered against the floor. There's a small smear of blood on the bedsheets where Quynh had used them to wipe a short-lived cut on her brow, and a few more drops from when Quynh broke Andromache's nose. 

The two of them are lying on the floor, cuddled together, two wads of toilet paper stuck up Andromache's nostrils and the sweat still cooling on both their brows. Quynh is nibbling on Andromache's ear, mindless and soft, just the hint of teeth. 

"Andromache," she says. "If you want to live out the rest of your days in soft beds, eating sweet foods, I will stay with you." Her lip quirks against Andromache's ear. "I've had far worse." 

Andromache exhales a laugh, more release of tension than actual amusement. She twists to roll on top of Quynh and grabs her face, so tight her cheeks scrunch together. 

"Quynh," she says. "I really, really don't want that."

In another hour they have two backpacks packed with the bare essentials: a change of clothes, matches, a compass, a map, some knives, some money. Their only concessions to modernity their toothbrushes, a first-aid kit and the powered-off SATphone at the bottom of Andromache's bag. 

She leaves a single text for the others: _Going off-grid with Quynh. I'll contact you._

"Where are we going?" says Quynh after they check out of the ridiculous hotel, security deposit a lost cause, and step out onto the sidewalk. 

They're in downtown Paris in midmorning. The sidewalks are crowded, the city loud with the sounds of busses, trains

Andromache raises an eyebrow. She nods her head east. "Dumplings are that way."

* * *

"I haven't seen stars like this in a long time," says Andromache. 

Quynh turns her head to look at her. The _neither have I_ is unnecessary, so she doesn't say it. 

They're lying on a horsehair blanket under the open sky. From Paris they had walked East, by the sides of roads and through forest trails. East of the Caspian Sea they had acquired horses and now they are here, on the Alashan plateau in what is now called Mongolia, the remains of a campfire smouldering beside them and a river of stars above them. 

It's better than any luxury hotel.

And though Andromache still feels different to Quynh, still feels like a melody that has entered a new key or like sand slipping through her fingers, she knows that in this, at least, they feel the same way.

"Hey, Quynh," says Andromache.

"Yeah?"

Andromache twists her head to look at Quynh, and her pale eyes catch the starlight. "We're back," she says, and it's in their old old language, the language that no one living on the site of her birth could still understand. 

It makes her eyes prickle, and that's infuriating. Quynh hates to cry. 

" _I'm_ back," she says in English, more brusquely than she feels. "Nothing was stopping you from coming here."

Andromache doesn't fall for her tone or her subject matter this time. "We're back," she says again. "You and me."

Quynh glares at her, schooling her face to say, _Stop._

Andromache only grins. Her eyebrows say, _Yeah?_

 _Yeah,_ says Quynh with the curl of her lip. _Don't you fucking dare make me cry._

Andromache rolls on top of her, pinning her to the blanket. Quynh growls and snarls, angrier at her tears than Andromache. And worse than that, Andromache knows. She cups Quynh's face in her hands and presses their foreheads together, and in the darkness her face is shadowed but her brow crowned with stars. 

"You and me" she says, in their old old language. "You and me, until the end." 

Quynh whispers a curse that no one on earth has spoken for four thousand years, and then they're kissing, kissing and crying, their cheeks slippery with Quynh's tears as Quynh's tongue thrusts up behind Andromache's lips. 

When Andromache's mouth starts its familiar path downward, Quynh throws her head back and fills her eyes with stars. In a moment Andromache has Quynh's legging down past her thighs and her tongue is pushing through Quynh's curls to find soft, slick skin. 

_We're here_ , Quynh thinks, and the stars blur and dance above her. _Her and me._

Andromache has relearned her on this journey, the old rhythms and the new. She knows how to take Quynh out of her mind, how to hold her tenderly over the cliff of release without letting go, how to spell out _I love you_ and _I want to fill you with joy_ with her fingers and tongue. Now she's saying it with her lips wrapped around Quynh's clitoris and two fingers inside her, pressed deep and curling gently against that perfect spot. 

Teeth graze her clit and Quynh arches, her fingers finding Andromache's hair. Andromache just parts her lips, her tongue now pressed to Quynh's folds and licking upward, again and again and _again_. 

And then—she stops. 

Quynh lifts her head, jaw clamped shut over an incredulous groan. Andromache is looking at her, eyes sparkling with mischief. She opens her slick-lipped mouth—and belches. 

A surprised _ha_ bursts out of Quynh's chest and then she's wracked with laughter whose edges blur into yells and cries as Andromache returns to her task, then from there into more laughter, and Quynh is writhing on the blanket, hips bucking so much that Andromache plants an arm across her lower belly to keep her still. Her other hand is still inside Quynh but she removes it only to add a third finger and press back in. 

When Quynh comes, it's with her shouts rebounding against the heavens. And hundreds of miles, and thousands of years away, the thunder reverberates with the sound of her voice. 

**Author's Note:**

> This originally started with just two ideas: the "peeing on the toilet while your SO sits on your lap" moment and the "burping in the middle of cunnilingus" moment. I just wanted to write silly goofy lovey dovey stuff. But then somehow angst happened??? Then the miscommunication and then the reconciliation, and now here we are, almost 4k later. 
> 
> A phrase that popped into my head while writing this was: "We deserve a soft epilogue, my love--but I don't want one." 
> 
> We have so little to go on in terms of Quynh's canon personality, so this was tough to write but also really fun. Is this how you imagine Andy and Quynh were together? Leave me a comment and let me know :)


End file.
